Some years ago in a different life time – when I worked in a students’ union – I was invited to try to write about the role of a students’ union CEO for AHUA, the Association of Heads of University Administration.
They were keen to demystify the role for their members – Registrars and Chief Operating Officers – roles not exactly commonly defined and widely understood themselves!
So now, several years on and I’m Executive Director of AHUA, I thought perhaps I should return the favour and try to define the roles I now serve for colleagues.
Things recorded
The Registrar title apparently stems originally from the Medieval Latin “registrum” meaning “things recorded”. In that sense the role is perhaps defined as the record keeper – a title that may feel somewhat uninspiring but we all know information and knowledge is power.
On that basis the Registrar is a role of considerable power holding the knowledge of how the decision was made and subsequently informing future decisions, knowing where the skeletons are locked and with the forensic knowledge of the sequence of events that are necessary to lead to an outcome.
But this inspires images of filing cabinets, minutes and gantt charts, which is not a fair representation.
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) title I find slightly more accurate than Registrar. While the Registrar title is somehow passive – “holding the records”, the COO title uses “Chief” to show the seniority and leadership function, and Operations is a much more active word.
It suggests the COO is actively turning the essential cogs that make the whole thing work. They are an expert engineer who knows what’s necessary to shift gears, maintain the machine well but, should it break, they know how to repair it.
It’s all in a name
Recent years have seen role titles further fragment and Registrar and Secretary, DVC-Operations, Deputy Chief Executive and Secretary, Vice-Principal Governance & Operations, PVC Governance & Student-Affairs, University Secretary and more now exist without huge differences in role and function.
A 2023 report on our members to try to define The Role of the Registrar suggested COO was now the most common title, perhaps a result of making the language try to be a little more transparent and perhaps more business focused.
With many of these names (similarly the name Association of Heads of University Administration) commonly inspire all the excitement of bureaucracy, process and procedure rather than leadership experts, problems solving specialists and student life experts.
On the subject of being experts in students, a Canadian survey of students found that over 29% of students reporting having met the Registrar at their institution (compared to just over 25% having met the VC of University President) suggesting the role is comparably highly student facing.
The roles, regardless of what they are called, are commonly the most senior non-academic role. They usually report into the Vice Chancellor and sometimes also into the Chair of the Council. They normally sit on the University Executive Board and lead on non-academic matters.
Governance is a huge chunk of their role, and a period of significant change and growth in the regulatory expectations on universities means that compliance and legal functions (H & S, data protection etc) make up a lot of a COO’s role.
Also frequently found in their portfolio are student services, admissions, organisational change, and planning (including performance management and institutional strategy). They will often lead on risk management and critical incident response. In many respects, if it’s not learning, teaching and research, there’s a high probability it’s overseen by the COO.
Breath and complexity
This huge breadth means they will often be responsible for very large teams of professional services staff (a term that always amuses me because I think all staff should be and are professionals!), significant and complex budgets and they tend to be balancing both highly responsive work with trying to drive long term strategic planning and large-scale transformational change work.
That huge breadth of team / portfolio, the tension between reactive and proactive and the burden of risk management require a very important set of personal qualities and skills. If you want someone who can empathise with the feeling many have of “spinning plates” or “understanding organisational politics” go and chat to your nearest COO.
In a recent membership research piece our members commonly talk about 4 characteristics being key in their roles;
- Resilience
- People Skills
- Leadership
- Political Acumen
Time poor but with huge amounts of institutional knowledge and accustomed to looking at universities through multiples lenses given they sit as a lynch pin between executive and council, between staff, unions and management, they are good people to know if you want to understand some of the various facets of how the university really works, where power sits within its structures, how to make things happen and which agenda or teams your priority might need to coordinate with.
The expert engineer
As I have spent time getting to know AHUA’s members I think I would describe them as critical conduits. They filter information and tasks between council, UEB, staff teams and external bodies.
They are prioritising workflow and trying to align the right decision making and specialist skills and resources around the key things the organisation might need to focus.
One Registrar described the need, not just to work across the Executive and the council, but to work across the whole institution, the person who “acts as the glue”.
It brings me back to the engine mechanic analogy I used earlier. The engineer isn’t necessarily the best car driver, the expert car valet, they didn’t design and build the car and don’t necessarily ride in it as a passenger.
They do though know what’s under the bonnet, they try to keep it finely tuned and ticking over so others can enjoy it and use it to get to wherever they need to be. They keep it running and, in the event its not working as it should, they will commonly be the ones best placed to repair and renew it to get it back up and running.
